


Invisible Banquets: A Tasting Menu

by yhlee (etothey)



Category: Le città invisibili | Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
Genre: Food, Gen, Pastiche, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 08:22:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12361551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/pseuds/yhlee
Summary: Cities and banquets; banquets and cities.Thanks to Sonya Taaffe for the beta.





	Invisible Banquets: A Tasting Menu

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Quillori](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quillori/gifts).



**Banquets and Memory**

In the city of Vuota, I came across a castle of red stone. "Come to our feast," cried the touts, and since I had traveled a long way through lands of dry grass and dust storms, I paid the nominal fee to be allowed entrance. Along with the crowd of women wearing powdered wigs and men whose hats were trimmed with peacock plumes, I drifted step by step.

The castle bore scars from old bomb blasts and gouges as though from the talons of some unimaginable beast, but was otherwise in good repair. I stopped at a fountain to dip my hands in the cool water and quench my thirst, and my appetite was thus whetted for the feast that I had been promised. So I continued following the crowd, trusting that they too shared this hunger.

We passed through a set of double doors upon which a bronze knocker resembling a misshapen lion roared. Within was an antique table behind a set of velvet ropes. Upon the table rested a set of china, gilt-edged, with motifs of fantastic complexity, gleaming, empty. An assortment of silver forks, spoons, knives rested in their accustomed places. I was not much interested in antiques, however, and jostled those ahead of me, to their obvious disgruntlement, so that we could proceed to the feast.

Alas, it was not to be. Room after room in the castle opened to me thus: always the velvet rope to discourage interlopers, always the table with beautiful plates that did not contain any food. Sometimes the tables were carved with intricate leaping fauns, and others with the stern faces of long ago duchesses and dukes; some were of bloodwood, others of teak, yet others of maple stained dark. The plates, too, varied, from translucent celadon to bone china so pale that it seemed lambent. On some tables the silverware was minimalist in design, while others sported rococo ornamentation.

At a certain point I realized that no feast was forthcoming. I was eager to leave and try my luck elsewhere. But the people in queue ahead of me were stubborn. They stared eagerly at the unblemished plates, the empty bowls, as if entranced by the smells of potato sausage or mutton pasties, as if gâteaux garnished with curls of shaved white chocolate awaited them for dessert. Thus I endured the dreary passage through the castle until I emerged, hungrier than ever, in the courtyard where a sign stood that I had overlooked upon my entry.

Here, finally, was an answer. For according to the sign, the people of Rassara came to this castle not to sate mortal hungers, as I had erroneously supposed, but to sup upon the memories of feasts served to those ancient duchesses and dukes, which the common people had then been unable to partake in. In this way the bounty of the past could be shared with the present.

In response to my obvious frustration, one of the people of Rassara turned to me and said, "Your appetite may be frustrated, stranger, but is this not the most memorable meal that you have experienced in all your travels?" And then I had to concede their point, even as I turned to the nearest street vendor to buy a stale croissant, the most delicious food I had ever had.

**Banquets and Desire**

In a certain city far to the north and east, known to its inhabitants as Keriza, I walked through several arches, each larger than the last, each garlanded by trumpet-shaped flowers, and into a garden. There among the fragrant blossoms and the trees with their veils of shade I found women, men, fox-faced persons, all with long-lashed eyes and pliant limbs. Some of them were already occupied with their guests, but one woman rose and bade me join her at the side of a pool where fantastically colored fish circled.

I did so, pleased by her boldness after a long time journeying alone. Soon others joined us, bearing with them goblets of fine pale mead, little dishes of dates stuffed with slivered pine nuts, pastries spread with lime marmalade or apricot jam, and other delicacies as well. I sank into the silk cushions set by the pool, and would have helped myself to the proferred feast, save that my hosts insisted on feeding me.

They would not let me reach for a morsel without plucking it out of my reach and teasingly holding it to my lips until I opened them and let them slip the food into my mouth. Sometimes I was tantalized by the smell of roast quail and would have availed myself, yet if I nodded my head in the direction of the desired food it was gently, coaxingly given to me. Nor could I so much as hold a goblet for myself, or indeed do anything but recline upon the cushions.

After a time, I no longer noticed the flavors, although they were surely exquisite. Instead, I was entranced by other sensations: the ripple of light upon the women's unbound hair, a smiling person's smooth delicate fingers brushing against my cheek, a man's caress upon my shoulders as he loosened my travel-stained jacket, the music of their voices as they murmured among themselves. In time I began to question whether it was the food or this friendly dalliance that refreshed me most of all.

**Banquets and Signs**

During my travels I came once to the city of Elara, and as I neared it, the traders of salt and song warned me to be careful of its food. Why, I said, was Elara notorious for its poisoners? For there are certainly cities where one must be careful of such things. No, they told me, the food will not kill you, but nevertheless it is not what it seems, either. When I pressed them for more details they would not speak further, and with a shrug I dismissed their concerns as superstition.

At first I had no difficulty. At the hotel, I stopped by the brunch and enjoyed some cold lox, some goat cheese flavored with pungent herbs, peppery rectangular crackers. I drank the coffee black, as was my wont, and grimaced at its harshness. Later in the day, as I wandered through the tourist district in search of bagatelles to commemorate my visit, I ate at a restaurant that served sturgeon caviar, very fine, and poached eggs, and salads of curling, slightly bitter greens that had been gathered from the hillsides outside of Elara.

The next day, however, even simple foods seemed overlaid by portents. As the sharp salt of the lox hit my tongue, I was reminded of tales of fish compelled to swim ever upstream, and the travails of the factory workers and weavers struggling toward advancement that they would never enjoy. The goat cheese put me in mind of the revels of satyrs, and I remembered then that some of the shopkeepers had warned me that during certain times of the year, the people of Elara indulged in wild bacchanalias, one of which would take place in a mere seven days. Even the rectangular crackers had a meaning, evoking as they did in exact proportion the precisely cut stones from which the fabled city hall, in all its glowering brutalist glory, was composed.

The longer I stayed in Elara, the more each food, from the simplest slice of rustic bread to the humblest bowl of local raspberries, took on a crowd of associations. I could no longer eat without being assailed by images that grew increasingly farfetched. By the time I was able to hobble to the city limits, I was seeing the rise and fall of nations in a serving of porridge, the expansion of the universe in a pair of scrambled eggs.

**Thin Banquets**

The mountain city of Agnès is best known for its ascetics, and with good cause. The visitor need not fear starvation, for its inhabitants are quite hospitable, and give willingly of the city's bounty. When I visited it I supped freely on slices of roast swan complemented by gravy, on hearty slices of rye bread, on apples carved into the shapes of roses in full bloom.

Yet for all the skill of Agnès' chefs, the rarity of its foodstuffs, the care with which each dinner was complemented with a wine from wine cellars that had been stocked by the best and most conscientious of vintners, the exquisite dinners soon palled. I had not thought this would be the case. After all, beyond the rigors of travel, I had recently passed through a poor village where the only food I could obtain, and that grudgingly, was rice gruel with a meager portion of wilted vegetables.

No: the ascetics of Agnès have, through a combination of the rarefied air and rigorous meditations, learned to survive on the most slender of rations. So it was that while I supped on escargot and braised rose veal and pomegranates at the jewel-height of ripeness, the people around me would eat so little food that they might as well have been dining on air. Their dishes were tiny, no bigger than teacup saucers, smaller even than that. A single spoonful of wild rice, a scant mouthful of yogurt, a sip of tea with yak butter will sustain one of them for a day.

It came to the point where I ate less and less, and could not face the heaping platters of venison stew, the rich soufflés, the lattice pies of peaches and ginger. The chefs of Agnès tried in vain to please my dwindling appetite, and were alarmed as I began to waste away. Finally they advised me to leave their city, as pleasant as they had found my company, for fear that the conditions that they found so natural were destroying my health.

These days when I dream of dinners at Agnès, I do not dream of the roast swans, the escargots, the venison stews, but think instead of a single mouthful of rice, chewed over the course of a day entire.

**Trading Banquets**

In Euphemia, traders gather at every solstice and every equinox to exchange memories. This part is well known. What is less well known is the special tradition of sacred meals that accompanies this, known only to the long-time inhabitants of the city. The traders may be satisfied with the cabbage rolls or the potato dumplings that are offered to them. Euphemia's natives, on the other hand, have other things in mind.

For the city's inhabitants, the sacred meals consist of mulled wine, sweet caraway bread, rare meats. Or such is the ideal, set down in ancient and fragmentary texts. In truth, it is only the prosperous who are able to afford the fine wines from the nearby countryside that produces reds and rosés of such splendor; or to patronize the best of the bakers, who, acknowledging the solemnity of the occasion, bake their bread in twisting braided shapes and hide within each loaf a single gold coin showing the profile of a vanished and fabled androgynous condottiere; or sup upon the flesh of bears or pheasants from the deepest wood. The poor content themselves instead with sour juice pressed from what berries they can scavenge; with stale crusts salvaged from the previous days while the children complain with hunger; with meatloaf made with a little greasy ground goat mixed with breadcrumbs and, perhaps, an egg from the family hen.

While the traders exchange one moonlit lake for another, one sweet-faced lover for another, one crumbling parapet for another through the medium of stories that blur into other stories, Euphemia's inhabitants shuffle into each other's houses. The rich go into the homes of the poor with their low tables where people sit on the floor to eat because they cannot afford chairs, while the poor, dressed in their holiday finery with faded embroidery and patched appliqué flowers, take their places at the beautiful, polished tables of the rich. And so they eat the meals that they have prepared for each other, the rich partaking of the lives of the poor, the poor partaking of the lives of the rich.

According to rumor, during certain years, there is a single family left out of this sacred exchange, forced to eat the meal that they have made for another's delectation; they are much to be pitied.

**Banquets and Mouths**

Crossing the desert until I came to a vast and glittering oasis, I found the city of Bouche, the city where eating has been raised to a singular art. In all the wide world, epicures dine upon wonders such as phoenix flesh, charred on the outside and meltingly tender within, or mermaid sashimi with the most piquant of wasabi, or the thousand-year eggs of dragons made into unimaginably rich omelettes. Yet none of these rivals Bouche for its mastery of an act that all people have in common.

At first I did not understand the nature of Bouche and its inhabitants, who went masked in their day to day business. I went to the currency exchange, and booked a room at a hostel, and wandered for a while in the delightful pavilions by the shore of the oasis, watching youths cavort and splash while playing a game with a hoop and a golden ball. I wondered at the purpose of the masks--had I arrived during some mysterious carnival or pomp? For of a certain I had witnessed such masquerades before.

It turned out that the masks are a courtesy to visitors who chance upon the city of Bouche. For each of its inhabitants has so focused their craving, their yearning for the perfect meal, that it has fundamentally altered the nature of their faces. They are discreet about this fact, and it was only through accident that I discovered it.

I had drunk too much sherry on my third night there, and had stumbled back toward the hostel, only I missed a turn in the winding streets of the city. So I paused in an alley that was cleaner than most alleys frequented by drunks such as myself--the people of Bouche are civic-minded, and conscientiously sweep their streets--and leaned against the wall of a tenement such that my face was hidden in shadow. I had meant only to catch my breath and reorient myself, for in the half-light of the moon all cities become strange apparitions of their daylight selves.

Instead I heard voices, and despite the hospitality that I had been shown by everyone I met, the old habits of caution were strong in me yet, and I flattened myself against the wall. Three natives of Bouche walked by, passing among themselves a meat pie whose savor I could smell even from where I was, the more so because the alley itself was clean, and not redolent of the usual stinks of refuse. I had almost overcome my initial wariness and began to call out to them to ask for directions when my heart froze within my chest.

For I had caught a glimpse of their faces--their hideous faces. Unmasked in order to take sustenance, it was revealed that instead of an ordinary visage, instead of two eyes and a nose and a mouth after the fashion of ordinary people, they had nothing but a swarm of mouths, thin-lipped, forever questing for something to chew on. How they were able to see or smell is not known to me, and I did not care to ask them.

Sometimes when a mood of gluttony overtakes me and I sit down to some hearty feast set with rich chowders, salads perfectly dressed with fine olive oil and balsamic vinegar, pears poached in wine and cinnamon, I wonder if another mouth is opening in my face--another--yet another. It has not yet been enough to quench my appetite, but I have taken to carrying around a mirror so I can check, just in case.

**Banquets and Names**

I am accustomed to making my wants understood in cities where all manner of languages are spoken, even those that I have never heard before. It is one of the skills that one obtains after years on the road. Thus it was that I did not comprehend the nature of the challenge that the city of Nadia would pose for me.

Ordinarily if I had need of a drink of water, I could ask for it through mime, through gesture, by pointing to the water skin that I carried with me at all times. Likewise, if I desired a meal, I could pull out the fork and spoon that I traveled with, battered though they were, and eventually come to an agreement with my interlocutors. Admittedly, there had been occasions where my foreign utensils were looked upon with disfavor or even shock, but so too was I skilled in the art of smoothing over offended sensibilities.

In Nadia, however, the language eluded my understanding. It did not bear any resemblance to the other tongues in the area, and even the lingua franca used by the merchants that I had accompanied did not seem to be in use. In vain I tried to master the rhythms of the language, its particular phonemes with their bounty of fricatives and sibilants and elusive vowels.

So too was it impossible for me to learn the names of any of the foods that I wished to partake of. Oh, I did not starve. In Nadia, restaurants sport vending machines outside that show pictures of their offerings, and you pay them your coin and punch the buttons to get tickets for the items you desire, and show those tickets to the smiling servers inside so the cooks can prepare your order. It is a humane and sensible system, requiring no language.

The pictures were not labeled in any language. Indeed, Nadia did not appear to have any consistent writing system at all, or else a system of logograms or pictograms so vast as to forbid casual learning. I was unable to discern any pattern to the symbols, and never saw one repeated.

Nor could I identify any of the foods I ingested except in the most general terms. Noodles, yes, there were noodles aplenty, but whether they were buckwheat noodles or egg noodles or rice noodles I could not tell. The vegetables blurred together in a bruised green mass, as though viewed from far away, or tasted in dreams. Even the fruits had a certain generic sweetness, and when I attempted to discern the particulars of their flavors, they evanesced.

I came to doubt that distinctions could be made at all, that words existed except in the most barren sense. Perhaps every bowl of noodles is the same, perhaps every ragout is the same, perhaps even every meal is the same meal. Perhaps my experience of this consommé is in fact no different from that of someone halfway around the world eating cornmeal cooked with greens. Only the fact of nourishment remains.

**Banquets and the Dead**

Ulalume is a city wholly underground, but that is not what makes it unique. In truth, there are any number of tomb-cities, especially in that region, which is geologically stable and thus suited to such enterprises. I do not seek out tomb-cities; yet I do not avoid them either, for they can make for restful visits, especially if one does not have any argument with the dead.

There is a tradition in Ulalume that the dead, like the living, must be fed. Foreign folklorists speculate that this belief is related to that of the hungry dead, who would come and feast upon their descendants if they were not appeased. However, when I asked the locals about this tidbit, they only laughed indulgently and said that never in their history had anyone been so discourteous as to leave the ancestors famished. Indeed, the city taxes the very wealthy so as to provide the ritual foods for the ancestors of the very poor.

The foods themselves are not edible by the living, which is what permits this arrangement to remain cordial. Thus it is that Ulalume has a whole industry of artisans who turn out waxen apples, oil paints of juicy steaks upon taut canvases, ceramic hams studded with cloves of black metal, plastic gazpachos. In the meantime, the living, who are mindful of the ancestors' watching eyes, content themselves with bread stews, gamy meat unseasoned with salt or pepper, unripe berries.

I had thought that this disparity would lead to resentment, but that is not the problem that plagues Ulalume, about which it is in denial. Rather, the issue is that the dead are slow to eat: slow to melt wax, slow to unravel canvas, slow to shatter ceramic, slow especially to disintegrate the hardy plastic. Year by year their feasts accumulate in the tomb-city, filling up the lanterned chambers and dim passageways, and year by year the living are forced closer and closer to the sunlit surface. Soon, it is whispered, the dead will stop asking for tributes of food altogether, claiming that they need a thousand years, a thousand thousand, to gorge on the surplus of generations. At that time all the artisans will have nothing to hold them in Ulalume, and the strange tomb-economy upon which the city runs will be turned topsy-turvy. It is entirely possible that some traveler in the far future will come upon an Ulalume still stuffed with bounteous feasts for the dead, and that no living citizens will remain.

**Banquets and the Sky**

Caela is a city of empty minarets spearing into the sky, lovingly maintained by people who do not live in them, do not work in them, do not venture in them save for the purpose of that maintenance. The minarets are much admired by tourists, and appear on the postcards that you can buy in any corner shop in Caela. I purchased one or two, I must admit.

The other thing for which Caela is known is its splendid airport upon a plateau overlooking the minarets, and from which one has an unparalleled view of them. I came to Caela by train, although that is not its favored mode of transportation, and I spent several days in search of its particular cuisine. For it is true that every city has its favored dishes, its particular drinks, and it is merely up to the visitor to seek them out.

The more bars and restaurants I stopped by, however, the more frustrated I grew. Over and over again I found the same uninspired menus: cold cereal for breakfast, blandly sweet; hamburgers with wilted lettuce and a flavorless slice of tomato for lunch; a tough, stringy pork chop for dinner, garnished with a single sad sprig of parsley. And yet I recalled, distantly, that people had spoken glowingly of Caela and its culinary delights.

At last I had had enough and I decided, on a whim, to book a flight from Caela to my next destination, chosen at random from the infinite list of places I had never visited before. I cursed my ill fortune, but if nothing else I could experience the fabled airport. The airport, as promised, was pleasant, its officials soft-spoken and polite, and I boarded my flight without difficulty.

It was upon the airplane that I discovered Caela's secret, which had been right in front of me all this time. All the time that I had been taking cabs around the city or traipsing through its entertainment districts by foot, I had ignored the planes taking off and landing. Yet it was the airplane fare where Caela excelled. Despite my usual contempt for airplane meals, I was genuinely charmed by the offerings, from a delightful toasted bacon-pesto sandwich to a glass of effervescent champagne to chocolate mousse served with berry coulis. It was not simply the novelty of being served such offerings on a plane, but also the attentiveness of the flight attendants, the honest deliciousness of the foods. So it is that people arriving at and leaving Caela taste of its bounty, which is only ever served in the sky, like a feast for the court of birds.

**Continuous Banquets**

According to the atlases, Dayira was a vast metropolis, founded by caliphs and sultans of old. When I went there, however, it seemed to consist of nothing but a small ring of houses. Nevertheless, I knew that all cities have their secrets, and that it would profit me nothing to leave without investigating.

As luck would have it, I arrived just as the evening meal began. It was a clear evening, the sky limpid and just tinged at the horizon with pink and lavender. The people of Dayira invited me to join them, and I accepted.

All around the houses, Dayira's people, more numerous than I had imagined from the number of houses, came out to set up folding benches. Upon these they arranged plates heaped high with tender roast lamb, figs ripe to bursting, goblets of honey wine, tart-sweet sorbets. This lifted my spirits, for I had feared that the fare in such a small village would be uninspired.

Dayira's people informed me of the tradition of their people, which was to take one bite from a plate and then pass it clockwise, so that everyone would have the opportunity to partake of the many different dishes. I found this agreeable. So it was that my first taste of Dayira's food was a nibble of poppy-seed pastry; and the second was couscous steeped in broth and the juice of oranges along with cinnamon; and the third was a sip of imported absinthe; and so on.

As the evening wore on, I became aware that what I had taken for a circle was instead a spiral, and that instead of the dishes passing round so that eventually what I had first tasted--ah, that pastry!--might come around to me again, they were journeying ever outward, to people whom I had not spotted at first. From the small village there materialized a crowd, people in the outskirts of the spiral reached greedily for their share of the feast, and for the first time I was anxious over whether there would be enough to feed us all.

I need not have worried. Rather, the sun touched the horizon and hung there like a jewel of red and gold, dipped down. The dishes kept coming. I began to fear instead that I would be trapped forever in the heart of the spiral, eating increasingly tiny bites of the dishes that kept appearing from nowhere, a prisoner of a forever feast.

**Hidden Banquets**

The just and the unust of Berenice differ not only in their philosophies of life, in their everyday habits, but in their cuisines. This was perhaps not as much of a surprise as it would have been to me in the early days of my sojourns. All cities contain worlds in miniature, and very often their subcultures distinguish themselves by means of their foods as well as their slang, their hairstyles, their choice of clothes.

The unjust of Berenice serve rich and complicated foods, sparing no expense in their procurement of rare spices: saffron, fennel pollen, chilies that only grow in certain remote parts of the world. Along those lines, they also spare no effort in the presentation of their banquets. Dinners are served upon platters of gold etched with the ravenous faces of past conquerors; drinks are served in glasses of such fine crystal that the beverage within appears to spark with prismatic splendor even when the lights are turned down low. The households of the unjust retain string quartets to accompany their meals with elegant, much ornamented music.

Yet while it is true that the just, spurning such things, eat rice and celery soup, boiled beans, fried squash flowers, the unjust use these same staples and would, indeed, not imagine of omitting them. It is simply that their rice and celery soup is made with stock boiled from the meat and bones of the roc, or that their beans are embellished with morsels of wyvern meat, or that their fried squash flowers are instead candied and served with a dusting of finest sugar. For their part, the just use the same complex utensils as the unjust, the same parade of forks and spoons and knives, in contrast to the old days, when--so it is said--people simply drank out of their bowls and scooped up their meals with unleavened bread. It is only a matter of time before the food of the just takes on the elaborate qualities that they once scorned, at which point the tastes of the unjust will change in order to maintain the distinction between the two.

So it is that the food of the just becomes the food of the unjust, and the food of the unjust becomes the food of the just, the one containing the other, a culinary ouroboros forevermore. It strikes me as likely that this is the case with all foods: every cuisine devours the ones adjacent to it, every cuisine is in turn adjacent, until one becomes another, and the old distinctions are illusory.


End file.
